Summaries of the presentations and my personal reflections on how to successfully bounce back from setbacks.

Notes by Sang H. Kim, Ph.D.

I blog about them as a series. Read Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4 and Part 5.

Great Expectations

Resilience increases as fear is reduced through the adaptive processes of adjusting and readjusting expectations. For example, you can meet the needs of the situation at your highest level of expectation and take action accordingly, or you can lower your expectations, do your best, and accept the consequences. While having high expectations all the time seems optimal, it is not always practical or healthy.

When there is nothing you can do about a situation, intentionally choosing to sit back and see what comes is one way to cultivate a resilient mindset. Because when you feel good about yourself and in control, you are more likely to do something proactive. Thus having unreasonably high expectations of yourself can be counterproductive and resilience may suffer.

However, if you meet the level of your expectation, no matter how low it may be, you will be less disappointed, and more importantly you will take action.

When you act confidently, your perception of yourself changes and you have greater leverage to move on to another growth opportunity.

Self-perception is made up of three elements: the way you see yourself from the inside, the way you see the world around you, and the way you perceive the way the world sees you. Your coping capacity depends on how you balance these three reflections of a situation.

Although all three can be distinctive in their roles, they share a common influence on your actions. When your values or forces inside you are stronger than outside influences, you will feel more in control of your destiny.

Resilience Building for Performance is a science-based experiential training strategy for stress resilience. It consists of a 60-minute presentation and 20-minute hands-on MBX-12 practice modified for agents working in the field and office. This and following blogs are the partial summary of my recent presentations for Leadership Training Programs for law-enforcement and security agencies and educational institutes in the US, UK, Ireland, and Korea.